


Slumming It

by ButterflyGhost



Category: due South
Genre: Divorce, Dysfunctional Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-28
Updated: 2012-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-02 15:56:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButterflyGhost/pseuds/ButterflyGhost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stella Kowalski still loves her husband.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slumming It

“Well, I'm sure that it feels rather unpleasant now, but you'll be glad when the whole thing is over.”

Stella let out a breath. Her mother had a knack for stating the obvious. Not only that, but she did so in such a glacially disapproving way, with a whole subtext just beneath the surface. She might as well just come out with it and say 'I told you this all along, you should have listened to me.' Of course, as the conversation progressed she was quite likely to do just that. Stella and her mother had been having this argument for years, and it wasn't about to end with the marriage. 

“Don't sigh like that Stella, I'm not chastising you dear.” Her mother paused, with the wine glass to her lips, and pinned Stella with a prim gaze. “I'm simply saying that once this is all out of the way you'll feel much better, be able to get on with your life.”

“My life is fine, Mom, I'm just getting divorced. It's nobody's fault... I mean, it's not like he was a terminal illness or something, he didn't hold me back.”

“Oh my dear girl, you really have to stop standing up for him. I'm sure Stanley is a very fine man...”

“His name is Ray, mother, you've known him as long as I have, how do you not remember he likes to be called Ray?”

“I'm not interested in what he wants to call himself. What I'm trying to say is that, in his own way, he's probably a decent enough man... but the Kowalskis are not really our kind of people, are they?”

Stella crumpled up her napkin and threw it to the plate, pushing back her chair.

“Stella,” the maternal voice cut in, turning her fourteen again. “There is no need to throw a tantrum.”

“I'm not throwing a tantrum, just, do you ever listen to yourself?”

“No, you listen to me. You've allowed this whole 'Stanley' situation to drag on for years, and we've all been forced to endure it. And now that you're finally seeing sense and ending the thing, you're taking it out on us... when we were the ones who warned you in the first place that this thing could never work.”

There it was. The 'I told you so.'

“Mother,” Stella spoke in her chilliest tones, learned at the maternal knee, “nothing could ever work with you around. You're a toxic cloud, nobody else could ever come near you. Did you ever think the reason I only had one boyfriend is because he was the only boy in the world who loved me enough to put up with you?”

“Oh, so you're saying it's my fault you ended up slumming it?”

Stella stood frozen at the restaurant table, as stunned as if her mother had smacked her. “What... what did you say?”

“Slumming it. I'm sure it felt very exciting, picking up a bit of rough, but you nearly derailed your entire career over that man, and I think it's fair to say you owe us all an apology.”

Stella took a deep breath, and folded her arms across her chest. If Ray had been there she would have turned round and put her tongue right down his throat, put her hands on his ass and squeezed. And even as she thought that she was ashamed of herself, for all the times she had done just that, treated him as a pawn in the endless game of chess between her and her mother. Ray deserved better than that. Because, her mother was right... the Kowalskis weren't their kind of people. They were warm, and kind, and decent. And their son deserved a wife who could be all of that to him, who could give him the children he wanted, without that needle sharp voice poisoning everything.

She packed her purse, and walked to her mother's side, leaned down to her, and spoke very quietly and very precisely in her ear.

“Just so you know, Mother, you've got it completely the wrong way round. He's the one who ended up marrying into a family of snakes. He was the one 'slumming it', not me.”

At that her mother did smack her, and Stella smiled. 

“This has been lovely, Mother.” She kissed her cheek, “we must do it again sometime.”

And head held high, face stinging from the slap, she stalked out of the restaurant. 

It took all her strength not to call Ray, not to ask him to come over, and hold her. Because he was so good to hold, so good to be held by. 

She wanted to call him, but she didn't. 

One thing held her back.

She still loved him.


End file.
